


And Stop The Bleeding Before It Starts

by inverts



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Arguing, Breakup, Character Study, F/M, M/M, emotional detachment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-08
Updated: 2017-04-13
Packaged: 2018-10-16 04:12:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10563447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inverts/pseuds/inverts
Summary: “Well, lucky you,” Taako sneers, “now you can use that time to see someonekinderandmore supportive.”“I,” Kravitz stammers, stumbles over whatever he wants to say, before sputtering out, “Are you breaking up with me?”Well. That escalated quickly.--“I’m kind of worried your brother hates me?”Lup presses a kiss to his forehead. Her lips are dry and scratch at his skin; they’re also warm, and the touch is tender. “Don’t worry about it, babe,” she says. “That’s just, like, how Taakois.He doesn’t dislike you. He just... doesn’t really care about you, either.”





	1. You Think You've Suffered Well You Ain't Seen Shit Yet

**Author's Note:**

> what up TAZ fandom i'm here to ruin everything
> 
> this is mostly a character study on Taako that wound up catching Kravitz in the collateral, sorry Kravitz, ur still my fav skeleton. Also i'm not trying to say anything about people who have difficulty forming emotional connections for one reason or the other. In fact, most of Taako's struggles with understanding other people's emotions and realizing he doesn't feel the same are my own struggles, so. 
> 
> Sazed is mentioned but not a focus so I didn't tag for him, but I understand he's somewhat of a ~*~controversial topic~*~ in this fandom so here's a heads up or whatever.
> 
> fic and chapter titles are from the song [The Desert Is On Fire by Murder By Death](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0raj07as_cU).
> 
> enjoy or something

“Do you think you should try being… a little nicer to the boy?”

Taako stops. Turns to look at Kravitz, who’s got that stiff-shouldered and averted-eyes look of discomfort. Says the only thing he can think to say in this situation: “ _What?” _

“It’s,” Kravitz starts, and glances at him, then down the hall at Angus’s retreating form. The boy is curled in on himself, his already diminutive height reduced as if trying to make himself a smaller target for Taako’s jokes. “You were sort of cruel there, at the end. Was that necessary?”

“Whoah there,” Taako bristles, even as he plays back the past few minutes in his mind. “Who the fuck are  _ you _ to tell me how to live my life?”

He’s been teaching Ango for months now, and Kravitz thinks that after observing one interaction, he knows better than Taako how to coach the kid? Hell, Taako had  _ complimented _ Angus on that Magic Missile. The fuck else was he supposed to do, throw a damn party for the kid? And yeah, he’d thrown in a couple little goofs, too, an ‘Agnes,’ here, a ‘don’t get ahead of yourself, short stuff, or I’ll disintegrate your wand, don’t think I won’t,’ there. But that was just ribbing between guys. Did Kravitz seriously think that was going too far?

“I—he clearly looks up to you, Taako—”

Apparently so. “That’s his mistake,” Taako waves a hand dismissively, his metaphorical hackles raising. “Greatest boy detective on the moon, you’d think he could detective out some better fuckin role models.”

Bone boy finally seems to be getting with the program, alarm on his face raising his eyebrows, dropping the corners of his mouth. “Taako,” he tries, but nope, too late.

“Look. I’m not gonna be some sweet doting big brother or dad or gay uncle. That ain’t me, and I’m not about to change my whole brand for one kid. He’s gotten the full Taako experience from day one.” Hands on his hips, Taako glares up to meet Kravitz’s wide eyes. “I’m done pretending I  _ care _ about people. It just makes ‘em  _ expect _ shit outta me that I can’t  _ give_.”

That shuts Kravitz up, and Taako realizes, belatedly, that Kravitz is halfway to figuring out that he’s included in that broad category of ‘people.’ That Taako’s not going to pretend to care about him. Too late to go back now, though. This was a conversation that was gonna have to happen sooner or later, anyway. Taako shrugs, slipping his hands into the pockets of his skirt, momentarily recalling his glee at discovering pockets in the garment before he remembers he’s supposed to be having a serious conversation about feelings, and Kravitz probably wouldn’t share his excitement at such a rare find as a skirt with pockets. And he could probably leave it there, let the conversation idle away to nothing, because Kravitz is certainly too anxious to push to continue the discussion, but. Nah. Kravitz started digging this grave, and they’re both going to fuckin' lie in it. 

“That’s not me trying to be aloof, or in denial or some shit,” Taako says. With each word, Kravitz’s face falls just a little bit more, and Taako is pretty sure that if he keeps going, he’s going to emotionally wreck Kravitz. That's unfortunate, but he doesn’t want  _ any _ misunderstanding. Not here. “I can’t get attached the way other people do. I’m probably never going to care about you the same way you care about me.”

At that, Kravitz looks absolutely stricken, his jaw slack, his face drawn long with the weight of sudden grief. Taako feels kind of bad about that, because it turns out, what he’s just said isn’t true. It’s not that he’s never  _ going _ to care about Kravitz as much as Kravitz cares about him; clearly he’s  _ already _ been outdone in the feelings department. Kravitz already has so much more to lose here than Taako does, and Taako didn’t even notice it happen.

Ugh. Honestly, why do other people get so attached so quickly?

“I used to pretend I could,” Taako recalls, and isn’t Kravitz lucky he isn’t one of Taako’s unhappy exes from back when the elf thought that was the best approach? “I got real good at faking; I didn’t even realize I was doing it, half the time, until something would happen that I didn’t notice because it just wasn’t fucking  _ important _ to me the way it was to someone else. And then they’d feel all betrayed and shit, because I’d let them down, and I’d feel like a shitty person? But you know what,  _ fuck _ that. I’m  _ done _ with that. I decided I’m never doing that bullshit again.”

None of this seems to be alleviating the pain clear on Kravitz’s face. Taako at least has the self-control not to sigh loudly. 

“I have done  _ nothing _ to imply I give a single fuck about anyone but myself,” he says. And he hasn’t. Not for years and years and years. It’d been so hard to break all those habits at first, to stop acting like he was concerned for people, to quit asking how their day was and pitching his voice just right so they thought he cared about the answer. To parrot and mimic all the behaviours he observed when people spoke and interacted with someone they loved. But he hasn’t done that here, he  _ knows _ he hasn’t, and yet people still—! A hard edge creeps into his voice, as he says, “So if you’re sticking around anyway, you’ve got only yourself to blame.”

It takes Kravitz a while to reply, and Taako busies himself by picking dirt out from under his nails. Not the most mentally-demanding of activities, but Kravitz would probably be upset if Taako pulled out a magazine and started reading or something. Finally, Kravitz seems to gather himself. “That all—that may be true for me,” he says, and Taako has to spend a moment remembering what the last thing he said was, to know what Kravitz means in his response. “But Angus is a  _ child_. Unlike me, he does not have the experience to know that he deserves a kinder, more supportive role model.”

Oh, he’s just going for all the low blows, isn’t he? It’s not like Taako takes a  _ lot  _ of pride in teaching Angus, not the same way he takes pride in being a chef, but it’s still an insult, and it definitely rankles. “Yeah? You know so much about kids, why don’t  _ you _ take care of him?”

Instantly, Kravitz backpedals. “I’m not—Taako, I’m not trying to steal your student, and besides that, I’m not  _ mortal. _ This isn’t—finding the time to come to this plane to see  _ you _ is difficult enough—”

“Well, lucky you,” Taako sneers, “now you can use that time to see someone  _ kinder _ and  _ more supportive_.”

“I,” Kravitz stammers, stumbles over whatever he wants to say, before sputtering out, “Are you breaking up with me?”

Well. That escalated quickly. Now that he actually thinks about what he’s said, it did kind of sound like that, didn’t it? Nevermind that Taako hadn’t even realized they were at a point where a breakup could be a  _ thing_. Tonight had only been date three; as far as Taako’s concerned, that’s still well away from actual commitment. Definitely still the time period where he wouldn’t feel guilty going on other dates with other guys, if there were any other viable options on the goddamn moon. Yet again, he and Kravitz are on such different pages they may as well be reading from different books. “I don’t know, buckaroo,” he says. His shrug this time is helpless instead of flippant. “I like our dates. I like fooling around with you. But it’s like I said; I’m never gonna care about you as much as you care about me. Most people, when they figure that out, it’s a deal-breaker.”

“I… I need to think about this,” Kravitz gasps out. He’s got the familiar agonized expression worn by people after Magnus has hit them, brow knit with pain, shoulders starting to curl inward, as if he could physically protect his emotions. Considering that his body’s mostly a construct of his own will and magic, maybe he can. “I have to go.”

Taako flutters his fingers in a wave goodbye, but Kravitz has already disappeared.

Probably better that way. Cutting things off at date three makes this one of the shortest ‘relationships’ he’s ever had, and while it means he never got Kravitz out of his pants, which is a fucking tragedy, the upside is he gets to avoid some of the more annoying, weepy breakup angst. If Kravitz’s reactions tonight are any indication, Taako’s dodged a fucking bullet, there.

It’s not like he decided to be this way, to view other people’s feelings as inconvenient wastes of his time. It’s not the life he would have picked for himself, as a child. He’d tried, for a long time, to do better, to  _ be _ better, because wouldn’t a good person care about other people? He could fake it until he made it, right? Maybe feelings were like spells; if he copied other people enough, if he practiced enough, he’d actually understand why other people got so much more upset at things that barely bothered him, or were elated over what struck him as mild pleasantries.

He’d gotten good at fooling people into thinking he had the same capacity for emotion that they did. He’d even fooled himself, for a while.

And then he slipped up, and Sazed found out he didn't actually have any fucks to give, and then forty people died, and Sazed bailed. And all Taako cared about was that it meant he couldn’t keep doing his show—forty corpses was, well, it was  _ unfortunate_, but the real tragedy was the end of Sizzle It Up With Taako. 

Most people, he realized, would have been more upset about accidentally killing forty people.

So he had to accept facts: he wasn’t ever going to  _ be _ that ‘good person’ he kept trying to be, and it was a mistake to fool anyone into thinking he could be. And maybe it’s thanks to his tragic lonely orphan backstory that he’s like this, unable to connect with other people, or maybe it’s just down to his own unique brain chemistry, or maybe  _ who the fuck cares? _ It’s him, and he’s gonna own it, and other people can fucking deal with it or fuck off.

… Still, the comments about Angus linger in his mind. It’s true: Angus  _ is _ a child, and he  _ doesn’t _ have the same kind of experience to draw on like Taako does. But he’s a sharp little kiddo, even smarter than Taako had been at that age, probably. Greatest boy detective on the moon. And little brat Taako wouldn’t have latched on to someone who was as big of an asshole as adult Taako, right? Like, little him had to have had more fucking sense than that. Little Taako would have ollied the fuck out and found someone better to stick with. He's pretty sure he can recall doing just that, more than a few times. So for Angus, who’s even more sensible than little Taako...

But, for being the greatest boy detective on the moon, Angus sure can be a dumb shit sometimes. Taako recalls pretending to steal his nose, and Angus’s genuine terror and shock; Taako remembers grabbing the boy by the lapels and pitching his voice low and threatening to kill him, and how immediately after, Angus had  _ still  _ gifted him the macaroons he’d made; and Taako thinks of the silverware set, gathering dust on the shelves of Fantasy Costco. And that’s just the highlights reel, isn’t it? He sighs.

He didn’t  _ ask _ for a hanger-on. And he might have offered to teach Angus magic, but that doesn’t mean he wanted to volunteer to be some kind of surrogate family member. But, even if he doesn’t actually care about doing the right thing, he’s at least able to recognize what the right thing  _ is_. In this case, it’s making sure the clingy little shit doesn’t grow up thinking jackasses like Taako are the best options he’s ever gonna get. 

So. He’s either gotta find a better mentor for the kid, or try to be a little more… encouraging? Supportive? 

He doesn’t like that second option. Doesn’t want to give the kid the wrong idea. Just gonna build up little Ango’s expectations, and then what happens when Taako doesn’t have the energy to pretend to care anymore? Taako's not worried about another Sazed, no. He trusts Angus. The problem is that he doesn't want to _ hurt _ the kid, not the same way he's hurt so many other people. The way he definitely hurt Kravitz tonight. No. What he needs to do is pawn the kid off on someone else, and fast.

Angus is a good kid, after all. A genuinely, sincerely good kid. And Taako doesn’t let him know that near often enough. And Taako’s not  _ going _ to let him know it often enough.

When it comes down to it, Angus deserves better.


	2. The Pain Won't Set In For A Long, Long Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't actually mean to write more on this theme, but.  
> The way Taako feels about himself is not necessarily a complete picture. It's definitely not how people who care about him feel.  
> And I needed a little reminder, myself, that it's okay to not feel things the same way other people do.  
> This character study got a little personal, w h o o p s.
> 
> also SPOILERS FOR UP TO EPISODE 59 (and then half of this was immediately jossed as soon as episode 60 went up, but oh well, i had fun)

“Nervous?”

Barry heaves a sigh, because  _ of course, _ how can he  _ not _ be, now that they’re planning their  _ wedding?  _ But with the way Lup is grinning at him, her eyes gone small with her cheeks pushing them into happy crescents, he knows she’s teasing. And he  _ is _ nervous, but—but it’s worth it, completely.

“Actually,” he starts, and has to steel himself, because he’s been putting off broaching this subject, but it needs to be addressed, he feels. Lup’s focus immediately shifts entirely to him, recognizing the little waver in his voice, and he tries to give her a grateful smile. He’s pretty sure it comes off more as a grimace. “I’m—I love you, I’m so  _ happy _ to spend the rest of my life with you, I’m just…” He inhales, and the rest comes out in a rush, “I’m kind of worried your brother hates me?”

Lup takes a moment to decipher his words, all jammed together in their hurry to leave his mouth. He can see when she finally understands, though, because a wide grin begins to break out over her face, until she throws her head back, laughing. 

“Honey,” she giggles. “Home-skillet. Bubeleh.” She has to put a hand on his shoulder to hold herself steady, shaking with laughter as she is; the other goes over her beautiful grin in a futile effort to keep back the tiny snorts that have snuck into her giggles. It’s kind of funny, thinks Barry, that for how different the twins are, their vocabulary pulls from the same eclectic pool; he’s definitely heard Taako calling Magnus ‘home-slice’ and ‘bubeleh,’ before. Kind of funny, but mostly cute. 

“Babe,” she finally says, her other hand dropping to his empty shoulder so she can look down at him. There are a few inches of difference between them, a fact that Lup will often take advantage of, resting her arm on top of his head and calling him her ‘PLP’ (‘Personal Leaning Post’). He acts affronted; she knows he loves it. Now, though, she’s trying to effect a serious expression, but her mouth tugs at the corners, fighting back a grin, and her ears are twitching. “You’re sweet, you know that?”

He can’t help it; he reaches a hand up to place his fingers on top of hers, and she twists her wrists so she can properly give his hand a little squeeze. “Lup,” he starts, but he has a feeling she knows already, what he means to say—he doesn’t want to be a problem for her relationship with her brother, and he doesn’t know how to navigate this issue. He grew up an only child; sibling relations are a mystery to him, except for how clear it is that Lup and Taako love each other. They support each other, they encourage each other, and they are always,  _ always _ there for each other. Lup will sit up late at night in the kitchen with Taako when he’s stress baking, even though she’s more likely to burn herself—and then the food—if she tries to help him, and she’s forever mixing up teaspoons and tablespoons; Taako will actually  _ listen _ if Lup is trying to talk through a mathematics issue that she hasn’t found the solution to, despite the fact that Barry’s definitely heard Taako remark to Magnus that all the numbers rub him the wrong way, and what the fuck are  _ imaginary _ numbers anyway!? As if math wasn’t annoying enough, they had to go and make up bullshit fantasy math to make it harder!? But none of those complaints are present when he’s sitting on the end of Lup’s desk and watching her pace as she grumbles about measurements not adding up, offering his silent support. 

Barry doesn’t want to be the thing to fuck up that relationship. The twins have a good thing going, and they had it going way before Barry showed up. 

Lup presses a kiss to his forehead. Her lips are dry and scratch at his skin; they’re also warm, and the touch is tender. “Don’t worry about it, babe,” she says. “That’s just, like, how Taako  _ is.  _ He doesn’t dislike you. He just... doesn’t really care about you, either.”

Barry leans back a little so he can meet her gaze when he raises his eyebrows, incredulous, at her. “He cast Mage Hand and pants’d me in the middle of a briefing.”

Lup, the love of his life, the woman he’s going to marry, bursts into fresh laughter and has to lean her head on his shoulder, shaking gently against him. “You!” she sputters out, “You were wearing! Those dumb boxers I got you!”

“I recall,” Barry says, dryly. How could he forget? The boxers patterned with images of handcuffs and the phrase ‘Prisoner Of Love’ all over. The whole IPRE had gotten a good laugh out of that, though nobody moreso than the twins. Lup and Taako had hooted with glee long after the rest of the room had quieted down. She had, also, been calling Taako an asshole and unrepentant piece of shit, but it hadn’t stopped her laughing. 

“He also replaced all my blue jeans with little red shorts that said ‘Are You Nasty?’ on the back, stole every right shoe from every pair of shoes I own, and threatened to kill me in my sleep,” Barry lists off. That’s really the cliffs notes version; he could go on, but he thinks he’s made his point.

“Hey,” whispers Lup, “ _are _ you nasty?”

“Oh my  _ god,” _ Barry groans, and she giggles again. Her arms have shifted; hands no longer on his shoulders, she’s wrapped him in an embrace without him noticing. He lets his own arms circle her lower back, his forehead pressed against that warm stretch of skin where her neck meets her shoulder. 

“But, yeah,” she says, her fingers idly tracing patterns on his shoulder blades. “That’s really just how Taako rolls. If he didn’t like you, trust me—it’d be much worse.”

“I feel like that was supposed to be reassuring, and yet, I am not at all reassured.”

She snorts, and then steps back, out of the embrace. He’s sad to let his arms drop, but she moves around to the work desk and waves him over, shoving papers aside. “Here,” she says. “Lemme just…” He follows, moving to stand at her side, as she makes a triumphant noise and pulls out a piece of scrap paper and a pencil. She sets immediately to drawing a long horizontal line on the length of it, and then she goes back and adds in little notches, labeling each with a number, one through ten. 

“This is us,” she says, jabbing her finger into the paper. “Or, like. This is a scale of how we feel about, like, say…” She shoots him a quick grin over her shoulder, and then draws a comical little face over the number ten. It’s hardly more than two dots and a curved line for a smile; she adds a circle around the face to define the head, some curly hair on top, and then—he squints.

“Are those… blue jeans?”

“It’s you!” she giggles. The drawing is crude, but it’s clearly a pair of jeans right under the smiling face. “This is how I feel about you, on a scale of one to ten.” She looks over her shoulder again, eyes narrowed in seriousness. “Ten is the best,” she adds. He nods, and she smiles, then goes back to her little scale.

“So, like… Here’s, say, Lucretia…” Another smiling face appears, this one over the number nine. “And then here’s, like, I dunno, those interns we had that one time?” A group of circles over the number three; these ones get eyes, but Lup is bored by the time she gets to adding their mouths, and so half of them go without. “But here’s where people are when I first meet them,” she says, tapping at the one. “Everyone here’s moved up, since then—I could add, like, Davenport and Merle and Magnus, but I think you get it, yeah?”

He nods, waiting to see where she goes with this.

Under the line with the one-through-ten notches, she draws another horizontal line. This one is much shorter; she puts fewer notches in it, and labels them zero through three. “And this,” she says, “is Taako.”

Barry’s starting to figure it out, but he stays silent as Lup draws another smiling face over the two on Taako’s line. She adds thick curly sideburns, and Barry knows before she says anything, “Here’s Magnus, probably. He might even get, like, a two-point-five?” Over the one, she draws a face that’s more beard than anything else. “Here’s Merle.” And then over the zero, she draws, once again, the smiling face with the blue jeans. “And here’s where people start, for Taako—and also, where a lot of people stay. It’s where you are.”

She straightens, smiling at him a little apologetically, but Barry’s nodding, taking in the diagrams and what Lup hasn’t said out loud, trusting the numbers to explain for her. The fact that Taako’s line starts at zero, when Lup’s starts at one—and obviously, Taako’s three isn’t really equivalent to Lup’s ten, or else she’d have given him a scale extending that far as well, and kept Magnus and Merle and Barry where they were. Taako’s three, then, is the same as Lup’s three; his scale just doesn’t go any higher. 

Like an instrument that can only reach certain octaves, Barry thinks. 

He taps his finger against the wrinkled scrap of paper with their scales. “Where are you?” he asks.

“ _Obviously,” _ she winks, “I am at the top of the line, sitting pretty on numero three.” 

Something about that strikes Barry as off, but Lup’s grinning proudly as she says it. And she’d know her own twin much better than he would, after all. 

She leans in and hooks an arm around his shoulder, pressing a kiss to his cheek, and any doubts he had are forgotten instantly. “So, did that help?” she asks. “You feelin’ any better about my scary little brother, kemosabe? Did I manage to reassure you that he’s not about to sneak into your room while you sleep and gut you like a fish?”

This time it’s Barry’s turn to laugh, a little chuckle that escapes him before he realizes. “Sure,” he says, tilting his head up so Lup’s next kiss lands on the corner of his mouth. “I mean,” he says, “I’ll also feel safe if I have you around to protect me.”

“Mm,” she hums, wrapping her arms around him, and the desk is pushing into his lower back, but her lips are actually on his now, scratchy and dry and perfect. “Guess I could let you spend the night in my bed,” she grins into his mouth. “For a good cause, and all.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Outside the door, Taako hears the conversation devolve into messy, wet kissing sounds, and he makes a face. Looks like his decision to wait for them to stop talking about him before making his entrance has blown up in his face. 

Of course the moment he’d gotten to the door and heard his name, he’d stopped to listen. There was no way he wasn’t going to eavesdrop on a conversation about him; he  _ loved _ that shit. The idea that people were paying so much attention to him that he was on their minds even when he wasn’t around? Fucking,  _ yes. _

At least, it was  _ supposed _ to be exciting and fun when he got to overhear people talking about him. They were  _ supposed _ to talk about how cool and attractive and awesome he was, not—not about how he didn’t know how to be like real people. 

In his mind, Lup’s voice reprimands him for that thought, as she has on every occasion he’s been foolish enough to voice it around her.  _ ‘You’re  _ different, _ sure,’ _ he remembers her saying, but then she’d squeezed his hand, adamant, as she’d insisted,  _ ‘It doesn’t make you bad or wrong or less of a person. It just makes you Taako.’ _

_ ‘Yeah, well maybe Taako fucking sucks,’  _ he’d snapped back at her, tugging his hand back.

_ ‘Shut up, you’re not allowed to say that!’  _ she’d frowned. He had shut up, then, but mostly because he was too busy sulking to argue. Lup had tried again,  _ ‘It’s like, look.’  _ She’d pursed her lips, thinking of how to phrase it, and Taako had let her take her time, content to wallow in self-pity while she arranged her thoughts.  _ ‘Like, say you’re making cookies, right, and you need—’ _

_ ‘What kind of cookies?’ _ Taako had asked, because he’d been feeling petulant and petty and he hadn’t wanted to feel better.

_ ‘It’s not important, but you need a c—’ _

_ ‘What do you mean it’s not important? This is baking!’ _

_ ‘Fine, ugh, I don’t know, sugar cookies! And you need, like, a cup of s—’ _

_ ‘Why would I be making that basic bullshit? Come on, at least let it be macaroons or something.’ _

‘Fine!  _ Fine, you’re making macaroons, and you need a cup of sugar—’ _

_ ‘One and three-fourths cups of confectioners’ sugar, and one fourth cup of superfine sugar.’ _

_ ‘Taako. My darling baby brother. If you interrupt me one more time, I will murder you.’ _

_ ‘I’m just—’ _

_ ‘No! Nope, you’re just shutting up and listening to your big sister! So you’re making macaroons and you need however much sugar you just said, and like. The sugar’s like emotions, see? So I’ve got enough to meet the recipe, but like, you’ve only got, um, half a cup of confectioners’ sugar to use. So you can still make your macaroons, but they’re not gonna be as sweet.’ _

_ ‘So I’m like shitty second rate bad baking from a chef who can’t read, is what you’re saying.’ _

_ ‘No!’  _ She’d made a frustrated noise, tilting her head back and rolling her eyes up as though asking for divine assistance in getting through to her idiot brother. _ ‘Like, haven’t you ever come across a recipe that’s, like, it’s asking for  _ too much _ sugar? And you make it, and it’s way too sweet and it’s kind of gross? So in that case, you’re perfect!’ _

_ ‘I guess,’ _ he’d mumbled. He could, at least, appreciate that she’d tried hard to make it a metaphor in his area of interest, even if she’d totally fucked it up. She was  _ trying _ to make him feel better. That meant something.

She’d put her hands on his shoulders, and then pulled him into a hug.  _ ‘It does mean it’s gonna be hard for you, sometimes. Because people are gonna expect one and three-fourths cups, and you’ll only have half a cup. But if they don’t like it, then they can fuck right off, okay? You’re just right the way you are.’ _

What was he supposed to say to that? So he’d hugged her back, and he hadn’t said anything about the tears he could feel getting his shirt wet under her face.

He’d been feeling lousy, yeah, but Lup had been the one crying, even while trying to cheer him up. Not for the first time, and probably not the last, he’d wished he  _ could _ feel whatever big, messy emotions were moving her to tears. Even though it sounded like it sucked. What sucked worse was making her go through that shit alone.

_ ‘I’m not alone,’ _ she’d promised.  _ ‘Even if what we’re doing or feeling isn’t the same. I know you’re here for me. I know you’re doing the best you can with what you have. I love you.’ _

Apparently, she still felt that way, if she was trying to make her fiancé understand how Taako rolled. Not making excuses for him, not saying he’d come around, but just explaining that he was the way he was, and that was fine. It was almost enough to loosen up a bit of the tight feeling in his chest, knowing that she still had his back, even if she was totally smitten with someone as boring as Barry. 

She’d gotten one thing wrong, though, in her stupid numbers explanation. She wasn’t a three on his dumb scale. She wasn’t anywhere fucking close. 

She was the only ten he was ever gonna have in his goddamn life. The exception that proved the rule of Taako.

_ ‘I love you too, you fucking goober,’ _ he’d told her, back then. She was the only person he could say that to, and  _ mean  _ it.

He hoped she still knew that. 


End file.
